caught red-handed
9
4.6
- idiom
:
atrapado con las manos en la masa
- Colin was caught red-handed.
- get caught red-handed
- caught red-handed stealing
- thief caught red-handed
So that's his coat, and he's been caught red handed.
- So that's his coat, and he's been caught red handed.
- When I was at Forest Bank, at least three or four lasses got walked to the gate, caught red handed.
- I think when you are already caught red handed, if you are actually sorry, that probably doesn't hurt you to say sorry.
- And I told the lad, the one who got caught red handed, the same lad I said to him when he who got caught red handed one of my Co defendants I'm going to bring.
Examples
-
The burglars are caught red-handed and arrested.
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Dunph, I was caught red-handed in the boys' dormitory with booze and pot.
-
I remember one incident when I was nearly caught red-handed.
Fiction book (1993) -
Smith was caught red-handed stealing from boys.
-
You engaged in ongoing deception, and you did not stop until you got caught red-handed.
Blog text (12) -
Sebelius simply reclassified the event as "political" after she was caught red-handed in a serious abuse-of-power violation.
Blog text (24) -
The centerpiece of the article was a series of very clear photographs that showed a kitchen worker caught red-handed as he emptied a big white bucket of garbage.
Fiction book (2002) -
The thief was caught red-handed while trying to break into the house.
-
The student was caught red-handed cheating on the exam.
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After investigating for weeks, the police finally caught the suspect red-handed during the drug deal.
Synonyms
24
3.8
Caught in the act of doing something wrong with clear proof
11
8.6
Caught clearly doing something wrong
5
3.7
Someone finds a person while they are doing something wrong
Caught in the act with clear proof
Antonyms
How Guilty
Surface Forms
Morphology
catch + red-handed
The verb 'caught' (discovered) together with the image of 'red-handed' (hands stained red) gives a partial clue that someone was found while doing something, but the conventionalized meaning 'discovered in the act of wrongdoing' relies on an idiomatic metaphor that is not fully predictable from the parts. A B1 learner who knows the constituent words may guess a related idea but would likely need prior exposure to grasp the exact idiomatic sense.
Etymology
Caught red-handed may come from a simple image: someone with fresh blood on their hands, literally red-handed, after killing an animal or person. If you were literally 'red-handed' you could not hide the crime, so caught red-handed means 'discovered in the act' or 'caught doing something wrong'.